Krzysztof Stefański
Composers in the Occupation Years
As a result of the September campaign, Polish musical culture incurred severe losses. Among other things, the Warsaw opera and philharmonic buildings were destroyed; Polish Radio ceased to exist; valuable music collections went up in flames. The Occupation authorities in the annexed territories began to carry out a policy of denationalization and systematic destruction of Polish culture.
Faced with the elimination of official concert activity, Warsaw’s musical and cultural life moved to the cafés, where the most distinguished prewar musicians and actors performed. One such establishment, the Salon Sztuki at ul. Nowy Świat 27, was even run by pianist and composer Bolesław Woytowicz. Such composers as Jan Ekier, Konstanty Régamey and Roman Padlewski performed at the cafés, but probably the greatest fame was gained by the piano duo of Witold Lutosławski and Andrzej Panufnik, who performed, in turn, at such cafés as the Arria, U Aktorek and, finally, Sztuka i Moda. During their 3.5-year concert career at the cafés, the duo created over 200 arrangements of works for two pianos. A certain insight into this repertoire is given by the Variations on a Theme by Paganini, composed in 1941, in which the popular theme is accompanied by robust and unexpected harmonic language. During the war, apart from the café repertoire, Lutosławski honed his musical technique and created sketches for his Symphony no. 1, which was finally completed in 1947. Lutosławski spent the time after the collapse of the Warsaw Uprising in Komorów, where he wrote various counterpoint studies, among them canons for woodwinds. These compositional exercises also resulted in the trio for clarinet, oboe and bassoon of 1945.
Lutosławski’s duo partner, Andrzej Panufnik, also spent the Occupation honing his musical language, especially in the area of symphonic music. In the first days of the war, under the influence of an optimistic mood, Panufnik began to sketch his Heroic Overture. After the surrender of Warsaw, Panufnik abandoned the writing of the work, returning to it in 1952. Under the Occupation, Panufnik finished his first and second symphonies, as well as the Tragic Overture. Though he wrote them with no hope of performance, an opportunity arose when he was asked by the Central Welfare Council to conduct two charity concerts in March and May 1944. During the first concert, the Overture was heard; and during the second, Symphony no. 2. At the time, the works evoked great enthusiasm and emotions. Unfortunately, the scores of both symphonies were destroyed in the Warsaw Uprising. The composer recreated the Overture from memory after the war. Based in its entirety on a four-note cell (subjected over the course of the work to various transformations), it displays the composer’s tendency toward concentration of musical material. Aside from symphonic works, Panufnik also created songs for the underground resistance, among which the popular turned out to be Warsaw Children. Songs for the resistance were also written by other composers, such as Witold Lutosławski and Jan Ekier, the latter of whom held the post of music director at the Underground Military Theater.
Also active in the underground was Konstanty Régamey, who was able by virtue of his Swiss passport to take advantage of privileges unavailable to Poles. Thanks to the right to possess a radio receiver and a superb knowledge of languages, Régamey prepared information bulletins for the underground (drawing news from, among other sources, Romanian and Portuguese radio). Under several pseudonyms (among others, Czesław Drogowski), he was also active as a courier, carrying correspondence between the London government and its offices in Poland, traveling in train cars marked nur für Deutsche. Despite his intensive patriotic activity, Régamey did not put his linguistic studies on hold, writing Historia Lingwistyki [A History of Linguistics] during the Occupation. During the war, Warsaw also witnessed his compositional debut (he had previously been known chiefly as a music critic). The composer’s Quintet for clarinet, bassoon, violin, cello and piano – in which he utilized twelve-tone technique, at the time not yet very popular in Poland – was presented at private concerts. Another example of his wartime œuvre is represented by Persian Songs for baritone voice and chamber orchestra, performed for the first time at an underground concert in 1943 in a version with accompaniment by two pianos (the composer complained afterward that in this way, certain sonic properties of the work had been lost).
Young violinist, pianist and composer Roman Padlewski moved to Warsaw from Poznań, which had been incorporated into the Reich. He quickly gained recognition in the capital, becoming part of the Eugenia Umińska quartet, in which he played second violin. He also accompanied Umińska during the concert tours of the cities of the General Government that she arranged in order to earn money. During the Occupation, he also made a name for himself as a composer, the author of a sonata for solo violin and a suite for two violins, as well as String Quartets nos. 2 and 3. The first of these was even published at an underground press under a pseudonym (R. Kasztan), as were selected compositions by Régamey, Roman Palester and Stanisław Wiechowicz. This work gained recognition via its power of expression, combined with allusion to Baroque and Classical formal patterns (1st movt. Preludium In modo d’una Toccata, 2nd movt. Introduzione e Fuga). Padlewski’s participation in the underground was not limited to publication of his own compositions. He was part of no less than four of the five committees of the Underground Musicians’ Union. Because he came from a family with insurrectionist traditions, it was natural for him to take active part in the Warsaw Uprising, like another young composer, Jerzy Wawrzyniec Żuławski. Padlewski served as, among other things, a gunlayer for trophy tanks. On 14 August 1944, he was shot while attempting to disarm a self-propelled Goliath mine, which resulted in his death two days later.
The situation of musicians under the Soviet occupation looked somewhat different. Some musical institutions survived; compositional activity was also permitted, provided that the given artist accepted guidelines imposed by the Soviet Composers’ Union, a plenary session of which took place – no doubt not coincidentally – in 1940 in Kiev [now known as Kyiv, Ukraine]. In the new reality, diametrical changes in style had to be made by, among others, Józef Koffler, one of the most distinguished Polish composers of the interwar period: the first Polish dodecaphonist, who carried on correspondence with Arnold Schoenberg and worked out an individual approach to twelve-tone technique, combining serial material with the formal patterns of Neoclassicism. Koffler received a professorial title from the new authorities and took over the composition department at the reorganized Conservatory in Lvov [now known as Lviv, Ukraine] (at which classes were also taught by, among others, composer Adam Sołtys and musicologists Zofia Lissa and Adolf Chybiński). In Symphony no. 4, the composer continued his previous artistic idiom, but in the Joyous Overture, he abandoned dodecaphony and attempted to conceal the Modernism of his musical language behind an ideologically correct program (commemoration of the events of 17 September 1939). Despite this, his œuvre encountered accusations of formalism and official condemnation, and the composer was obliged to submit a self-criticism. In his subsequent works (such as Four Works for Children, Händeliana and Ukrainian Sketches), Koffler simplified his musical language and – in accordance with the guidelines of Socialist Realism – turned to tradition and (importantly) Ukrainian folklore. After the occupation of Lvov by the German armed forces in 1941, the composer most probably ended up in the ghetto in Wieliczka and, after its liquidation, apparently died at the hands of the Nazis in the vicinity of Ojców in 1943.
The tragedy of the Occupation years spared Grażyna Bacewicz, whose entire family fortunately survived the war. The composer was also able to celebrate the birth of her first and only daughter, Alina, on 20 July 1942. This did not prevent her from carrying on an active concert career, as well as continuing her compositional activity, above all, in the field of chamber music. Such pieces as her Sonata for solo violin, Suite for two violins, Three Preludes for piano, Piano Sonata no. 3 and, finally, String Quartet no. 2 were written during the Occupation years. In these works, the composer remains faithful to the Neoclassical idiom in which she wrote back before the war. An important function in these works is fulfilled by vital rhythm, as well as motivic language alluding to native folklore. During the war, she also wrote an Overture, which – despite its utilization of a four-note motif similar in rhythmic terms to the one from Panufnik’s Tragic Overture – remains completely different in terms of expression, maintained in a cheerful, energetic character. The Overture was performed in 1945 in Kraków during the Festival of Contemporary Polish Music.